Micropayment Barriers (1998)

Transaction fees are there, but don't have to be enormous. Our code can also optimistically unlock the page under the assumption that pending transactions will eventually go through, so block time is also less of a concern.

Right now the tricky thing is that it requires a browser extension if you want to transact directly with crypto (or use one of the few browsers that come with a built-in web3 wallet).

We also have a managed crypto wallet service that allows people to pay with credit cards, but it isn't widespread because it can only be used to buy keys for locks we have approved.

The cost of crypto transactions has always been known, it just used to be paid for by the userbase as a whole when the block reward was more substantial, whereas right now the user pays for their own transactions.

I actually think the Lightning network is a semi-viable solution, it essentially overlays a "credits" system onto the original network that's especially appropriate for micro-transactions.

That's for purely on-chain transactions. There's also a partly-offchain solution called "zkrollups" that uses zero-knowledge proofs to reduce the storage for a simple value transfer to 11 bytes, without introducing any unpleasant security assumptions like requiring the user to be online to receive payment or prevent cheating. Combining that with sharding gets to about a quarter million tx/sec.

If that's not sufficient for micropayments, it's fairly straightforward to extend zkrollups to make payments probabilistic: e.g. to pay one penny, send a 1% chance of paying a dollar. There are some potential doublespending issues here but for voluntary tips that's not a problem.

The simpler solution is: no fees for small debit transactions, once the baking system is modernized the cost of a transaction is in fact close to zero. This is already the case in Western Europe.

This difficulty compounds because banks went through a big derisking and are more or less allergic to MSBs. It seems a little anti competitive to have the banks deny you access to payment processing. The alternative is they will charge very high account maintenance fees (10k per month has been quoted to me).

I really want to build something like this but it will be a legal nightmare. No wonder people are looking to cryptocurrencies to solve these issues. I'm actually a little excited about libra since they will have the resources to overcome these hurdles.

I may have a hundred million pageview credits, but it's still a gnawing "This will cost me one." It's still going to end with "we're outside the big network and want a seperate fee."

The simplest answer is to pull the consumer from the purchasing loop. Create a state endowment to pay artists and journalists a living wage, public-domain all the things, and then we can browse in peace, knowing our taxes paid for it.

I was like yourself with this belief until i tried out mobile legends at a friend's request. I'd always read how bad those games were for that but I didn't really get why until I seen it myself. The game is so full of dark patterns and Skinner boxes to get you spending I don't even know where to begin. It's my first f2p game with things like that, it boggles my mind how much crap is being constantly thrown at me to get me to spend money on random skins, powerups, and heroes. Even when you're not playing, the game entices you to log in to give you a free chest every few hours with a push notification. It reminds me of the way a drug dealer gets customers hooked. They give you little bits of free shit when you first start then cut you off hard after a week.